InDesign:
The good, the bad and the ugly
by Kathryn L. Glorieux
Compared to the computer publishing programs that we have now, the printing press is a very archaic form of technology, with its wooden block letters and inking pressed into the paper. Before the invention of the printing press in 1452, however, all reproduction of books had to be written out by hand (Jones, 2000). The printing press, of course, made the mass production of books and other forms of paper printing much easier than it was in the past, and up until 1990, The George- Anne, the student newspaper at Georgia Southern University, was still physically cutting and pasting their pages together, before sending them to press. In 1990, however, Georgia Southern University became the first school in Georgia to have their student newspaper use a page layout program, called Pagination. Since then, The George- Anne, and all other forms of print student media, has continuously tried to keep as up to date as possible with their layout and design programs, currently using InDesign for all their publication needs.
InDesign is a print publishing program produced by Adobe. It is quoted as taking “page design to a new level, combining extraordinary production power and creative freedom with innovative cross-media support (Adobe, 2004).” Having all the benefits of PageMaker, the print publishing program that Adobe made before InDesign, it builds upon this program and has extra features not found in PageMaker. It is an ideal program that can be used for all forms of print publishing, from newspapers to magazines, brochures to menus and everything in between.
InDesign is an ideal program for many reasons. It builds on the already widely used PageMaker program, incorporating many of its useful properties and adding on more of its own. Unlike it's predecessor, Indesign is compatible with more operating systems than any of the other layout programs out there today. It works with Widows 98, 2000 and XP, along with Mac OS X. It has a wide range of abilities and is compatible with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Acrobat , making it easier to manipulate and import pictures within all of these programs. InDesign also has “XML import/ export capabilities and other tools that lay the foundation for cross-media publication…”(Adobe, 2004). It can also process faster than Page Maker, according to Adobe themselves.
From their seemingly recent release of InDesign, Adobe has already has the upgrade on the market. InDesign CS deals with most issues that users have found wrong with InDesign 2.0, including Page Maker attributes that many users devoted PageMaker users missed. However, it is far from perfect. A major issue that Adobe is trying to correct, is the inability of InDesign 2.0 to open InDesign CS files. There are also a few other minor problems. According to Sandee Cohen, from Creativepro.com, InDesign CS has "many more bold and long document features that are missing.... [like] cross references, numbered list and figure numbers."
The publication program Adobe InDesign 2.0, which is similar to Adobe PageMaker, is used to layout The George- Anne, The Reflector and The Miscellany, for the Georgia Southern University students. InDesign 2.0 has brought about a revolution in all forms of student media print on GSU's campus. With this program, students have been able to produce more eye catching headlines, story formats, and improve the overall layout. Though InDesign may not be an ideal program for making fliers or for writing books, it is more than student media could ever hope for and has helped The George- Anne win many awards. Thank you Adobe for a job well done.